This invention relates to swept bearing surfaces, and is primarily but not exclusively concerned with components such as cylinders and cylinder liners for engines such as internal combustion engines for pumps and other machines. The invention can also be applied to parts with external bearing surfaces such as pistons, and to swept surfaces such as rotary piston engines with epitrochoid housings. An object of the invention is to produce bearing surfaces particularly but not exclusively of components of mild steel or cast or malleable iron, which are extremely hard wearing.
A further object of the invention is to produce bearing surfaces on components in which the material of the component itself virtually does not constitute the bearing surface. Thus materials which normally cannot be used e.g. for cylinder or cylinder liners such as malleable or soft iron, can be rendered with hard wearing surfaces.